Gwendolyn leaned back and whispered to Herman. “Would now be a good time to break out the Bollinger?”
He nodded and headed toward his office.
“This is happening more and more.”
It was the woman Marilyn had arrived with. She wore her hair in a bob and possessed a sweet smile.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” Gwendolyn said, extending her hand. “I’m Gwendolyn Brick.”
“Marilyn talked about you the whole drive over,” the woman replied, shaking her hand. “I’m Dona Drake.”
“Have you known Marilyn long?”
“Since she started at Fox. I’m married to Billy Travilla.”
“Oh, yes? Your husband does such wonderful work!”
Dona tilted her head toward Marilyn. “A few months ago, he told me he’s found his muse. He said it’s going to be like Joan Crawford and Adrian.” Marilyn let out a peal of laughter. “She’s getting good at this PR game. We’ve spent all morning with that newspaper guy. She’s been perfectly charming the whole time and hasn’t thrown him one personal scrap. That girl learns fast.”
“She’s headed for such big things.”
“That’s what Billy said, too.” Marilyn had been cagey about her childhood, but over the past couple of years, Gwendolyn had gleaned a few details. An unstable mother. In and out of orphanages. It all sounded pretty rough. “Billy isn’t convinced that she’s built to cope with that sort of fame.”
“Emotionally, you mean?” Gwendolyn offered.
Dona nodded. “You need two feet planted firmly on the ground to survive it.”
Fans and autograph hounds besieged Marilyn. Waiters in smart red jackets appeared with silver trays of champagne flutes and porcelain plates loaded with chocolates.
“Billy encouraged me to befriend her,” Dona added. “She’s mentioned you a bunch of times, so when your launch came up the same day as this Herald-Examiner walk-around, the stars aligned.”
Gwendolyn thought of her dead car back at the Garden and how an hour ago she’d doubted the stars were aligned except perhaps in the worst possible way. “I haven’t seen Billy since Marilyn got her contract and a bunch of us went out to celebrate.”
“I was doing press on Valentino at the time. Billy told me it was quite a night. And he said to tell you that we’re planning to go see Ella Fitzgerald at the Dunbar and are putting a table together. We’d love for you to come.”
The Dunbar was the most famous of the jazz clubs that lined Central Avenue south of downtown LA. It had earned a reputation as the best place west of the Mississippi and south of Chicago to experience the raw passion of Negro music. Gwendolyn had always wanted to see a show there, but had never mustered up the courage. She told Dona to count her in as the chatter surrounding them intensified a notch or two.
Schofield appeared at Gwendolyn’s other side. “Shall we?” He guided her to the front of her old counter, where he cleared his throat. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.” He waited for the crowd to simmer down. A bit of a tall order, Gwendolyn thought, considering he’d just plied them with champagne. “What an exciting day!” he exclaimed.
Some wisenheimer at the back called out, “Not for Hearst, it ain’t!”
Schofield seized on the laugh that followed. “If your name is William Randolph Hearst, then perhaps you’re right. I’ll grant you that.”
Even though he came across like he’d just stepped out of a Dickensian gentlemen’s club, it was clear Schofield knew how to work an audience.
Gwendolyn took a deep breath to relax herself.
“However,” he continued, “if your name is Bullocks, today is a wonderfully bright day indeed.”
Gwendolyn wished Horton could have been there. He was as responsible for Sunset Boulevard as anyone. He found the guy who came up with the formula and designed the packaging, but Dragnet kept him busy six days a week now.
On Wednesdays, he sent her the script via bike messenger, and on Thursdays, she sent it back marked up with female wardrobe suggestions taken from what she had in stock. Their budget was growing, so the arrangement now benefited them both. Horton hadn’t been this happy in a very long time. She smiled to herself and hoisted a champagne flute. Horton, old chap, this one’s for you.
CHAPTER 11
Marcus opened the passenger door of his Ford and held his hand out for Regina. She gripped it as she hoisted herself inside.
“Thank you, my dear boy,” she rasped. “These joints ain’t what they used to be. But with L.B. Mayer gone from MGM, what is?”
He closed the door, returned to the driver’s side and slipped in behind the steering wheel. “You look very chichi, I must say.”
“It’s nice to be noticed, I must say.”
Her outfit featured black and white bugle beads tightly woven into entwined diamonds and zigzags. The sum total of what Marcus knew about women’s clothing came from being around Gwendolyn, but even he knew it must have taken months to sew.
He merged onto Melrose Avenue. “It looks original; the dress, I mean.”
“It is! Oh my, what an eye you have.”
Regina held up her arm so that the passing streetlights picked up the sparkle in the beading. “It’s a Paul Poiret, but I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him.” Marcus admitted that he hadn’t. “He was Elsa Schiaparelli’s mentor.”
The traffic was unusually light and they were making good time. He turned onto Gower. “Perhaps I ought to have worn a tux.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I thought we were just going to the movies.”
The laugh that followed—a tinkling pixie giggle that sounded like it’d first been dragged across broken glass—reminded him of Madame Nazimova.
“I suppose you could call it that.” Regina contemplated the Paramount soundstages silhouetted against the pink dusk to their left. “You ever worked there?”
“Nope, but I know the head of the writing department.”
Marcus and Quentin Luckett met during the war when Quentin was angling to get his boyfriend an MGM contract. But they hadn’t seen each other since well before the word HUAC was enough to give everybody an attack of the vapors.
They pulled up alongside the RKO globe at the corner of Gower and Melrose. Regina gazed up at it.
“How come you haven’t called in a favor to see if he can get you working background? Or maybe even a dress extra. They pay more for that, especially if you wear your own tux.”
Marcus hit the gas and took the corner on what felt like two wheels, and charged west toward the Silent Movie Theater. “I’m not that desperate yet.”
Since Doris helped him join the Screen Extras Guild, Marcus had been working regularly at Columbia. He hoped that by physically being there, an opportunity to lift himself off the graylist might come about. After six weeks of sitting in fake nightclubs and walking down pretend New York streets, he’d started to wonder if he was just kidding himself.
“You want to explain that?” Regina sounded huffy now.
“Explain what?”
“That crack about being desperate.”
“It’s just that Quentin and I were once on par with each other—he at Paramount, me at MGM. He’s still way up there, and I’m way down here. It’s just hard to—”
“So it’s a matter of pride?”
“I never quite thought about it like that, but I guess so, yes.”
Asking Quentin for background work involved swallowing a pumpkin-sized wedge of humble pie, and Marcus wasn’t sure he could force it down yet.
Just past the high school Marcus swung the car onto Fairfax Avenue where a pair of spotlights swept the sky. In contrast to the usual extravaganza of sculpted plaster scrolls and blazing neon, this theater was an unassuming edifice of clean lines squatting behind an unadorned marquee. A crowd rigged out in gowns and tuxes as formal as Regina’s extravaganza gathered in the doorways and spilled across the sidewalk.
Regina pointed to an empty parking space out front of the theater. “W
e can park there.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Marcus said. “Looks to me like they’re saving it.”
“For a smart cookie, you sure are a dum-dum. Read the marquee.”
REGINA LA PLANTE
RETROSPECTIVE TONITE!
“You made enough movies to fill a retrospective?”
“That’s what the sign says, doesn’t it?” She was smiling now, smug as a fox.
“I had no idea you starred in silent pictures.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask a question once in a while.” She gestured toward the theater. “Come on. They’re waiting for me.”
The vintage Paris gown now made sense. “I wish you’d said something. I’d have dressed up.”
“Trust me, sweet cakes, they won’t be looking at you.”
Regina climbed out of Marcus’ car as though her joints weren’t the slightest bit screaming from arthritis. “Bless you all!”
She threw out double-handed kisses like fistfuls of confetti to her applauding fans as a middle-aged guy who looked like Monopoly’s Uncle Pennybags rushed toward her. “Miss La Plante!” He thrust out a bouquet of white roses.
Regina pulled a For me? face, and took in a deep sniff of their scent. She lifted her Betty Boop eyes heavenward. “Thank you! Thank you all!” Now she sounded like Lynn Fontanne in the third act of Pygmalion. “I couldn’t be more tickled.” She hooked Marcus by the elbow; he felt her weight as she leaned on him. “But why are we all standing around in the night air? Let’s go in and enjoy the show!”
Marcus cupped her elbow and guided her into the foyer. As they inched forward, he observed that at forty-five, he was the youngest person there—by twenty years.
Most of the men had done their best to squeeze into dinner jackets; their front buttons were straining to hold everything in place. The women had turned out in their best silks and brocades. Marcus detected the pall of mothballs mingling with the cigarette smoke. While no one matched Regina’s French original, it was a sophisticated parade that probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the stock market crashed.
Mr. Monopoly reappeared in front of them. “We’ve reserved the best seats—fifth row, center!”
“How perfect. And how thoughtful! Thank you very much. This is all so thrilling.”
Once they were settled in Row E, Marcus nudged Regina’s shoulder. “Can I get a potted history?”
“Remember Essanay Studios?”
“In Chicago?”
“I grew up on Winnemac Avenue, just a block north. First background, then bit parts, then featured roles. I worked with them all: Wallace Beery, Ben Turpin, Colleen Moore. Glorious like you wouldn’t believe. But then they moved to California, so I did, too. Thomas Ince saw me in a picture with Francis X. Bushman—”
“No kidding? I met Bushman at the opening night party at the Garden of Allah. He was my first—”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Beg your pardon. Go on.”
“So Thomas—lovely man, by the by—he offered me a contract paying me five times what I’d been earning. He threw every role at me: nurses, hookers, secretaries, vamps, housewives. My favorite was Priscilla Propeller. I played a lady archeologist who becomes an aviatrix.”
“Sounds logical.”
“It wasn’t in the least, but it was a huge hit, so who cares? You’ll see it tonight.”
“I’m glad.”
“I worked for Thomas maybe five or six years until he died in the mid twenties. His studio was sold to DeMille, but my contract wasn’t part of the deal. I finagled a sound test for Goldwyn, but I just didn’t record well. My voice was considered too high—I hadn’t started smoking yet so I came off sounding like a chicken beak dragged across a 78 record.”
“I’m sure you weren’t that bad.”
“I’m quoting Goldwyn himself. But that’s okay, I had ten fabulous years.” Regina lifted her palms to the theater’s low-slung ceiling. “And now this!”
Mr. Monopoly walked in front of the screen to a round of applause. “Welcome to the Silent Movie Theater. Tonight we get to re-experience the visual delight that was—IS!—Miss Regina La Plante. I can see that she needs no introduction, so let’s plunge ourselves into my favorite, 1912′s Corinne Rides the Rails.”
“I’d forgotten all about Corinne!” Regina whispered into Marcus’ ear. “You’ll enjoy this one.”
* * *
The table at Canter’s Deli was supposed to sit eight; somehow they managed to squeeze in eleven, with Marcus at one end and Regina holding court at the other. He could scarcely hear her over the lively hubbub, so he turned to his neighbor, a tiny woman whose forearms heaved with silver bangles and bracelets and who wore her hair in a Louise Brooks pageboy. Her name was Linda Sunshine—she swore up and down it was her real name—and she got her start standing in for Lillian Gish on the set of Broken Blossoms.
“Lillian liked me so much, I stood in for her all the way up to La Bohème. But I got into the most awful fight with King Vidor. He had me barred from the MGM lot, so I went to Paramount where I got a part in their first talkie, Interference. It starred Bill Powell and I had a mahvelous scene with him. We kept cutting each other up, and oh my goodness, the director got so mad! But Bill calmed him down fast enough. I swear that man could charm the trunk off an elephant. And I know about elephants. I was in Elephant Boy with Sabu.”
Across from Marcus sat a wizened old Brit with a choleric frown who’d made a “very tidy career playing butlers, chauffeurs, and maître d’s at every major studio you could name, and a few you probably couldn’t” until a nasty fall at Malibu Canyon crushed his serving hand.
Next to Linda was a big-boned gal with flaming orange hair who had acted opposite Ann Sothern in all ten Maisie movies. Linda Sunshine told Marcus in a hoarse whisper that she “goes by the name of April-Mae June even though we know she’s just Wanda Berkowitz from Queens.”
The table conversation drifted to what everyone was doing now. Marcus expected them to wax nostalgic for the good old days, but they sat up like jackrabbits and gushed about how busy they were.
Everyone else Marcus had encountered since returning to Hollywood complained about how television was slaughtering feature films, and how “that repugnant little box in the living room corner was gobbling up every last member of the moviegoing public.” But episodic television’s insatiable appetite chewed through writers, directors, cast and crew, so this group found themselves constantly in work.
April-Mae June declared, “Especially them there westerns. Why, just last month, I worked on The Cisco Kid, Adventures of Kit Carson, Hopalong Cassidy, and The Lone Ranger. All those homesteaders and wagon trains. It’s a gold mine!” She tapped Marcus on his nose. “I can see you playing a honky-tonk barkeep. They need a new one on Lone Ranger. I could put in a good word for you.”
Marcus picked at the remnants of his brisket. It felt like more than just a year and a half since he worked on The Lone Ranger, first as a writer, then as the de facto head of writing when the show supervisor, Anson Purvis, fell ill. And she wanted him to stand behind a bar and serve sarsaparillas to cowboys? No thank you.
Regina picked up on Marcus’ reticence and swerved into a funny tale involving a libidinous bull and a circus clown on the set of Corinne Rides the Rails. Soon everyone was sharing stories of working every movie from Intolerance up.
Marcus could have listened to these peoples’ recollections all night, but just before midnight, Regina flagged him with a not-too-subtle I’m-done eyebrow lift. The party broke up and Marcus escorted Regina to his car. He pulled a U-turn as Regina fished around in her beaded purse.
“You don’t mind, do you?” She lit a match and a pungent aroma filled his car, taking him back to the first time they met.
“You still smoking that wacky tobacky?” he asked.
“Please tell me you’re not one of those wet blankets.” She let out a long, straight plume.
“I live at the Garden of All
ah, not the St. Benedict Monastery.”
“Thank Christ for that!” Regina passed the reefer across to him. Even though Robert Mitchum’s marijuana arrest a couple of years back had done much to diminish marijuana’s reputation as a danger to society, Marcus hadn’t gotten around to trying it. He rather liked the irony that his first puff came from a quirky dame old enough to have worked with Ben Turpin.
He accepted the cigarette and took in a drag. A moment or two later, a breezy lightheadedness rippled through his body. “Thanks for a wonderful night, you dark little horse, you.” His words came out slightly slurred; he eased off on the gas. “You might have warned me.”
Regina took the reefer back. “You just went through a red light.”
Marcus checked his rearview mirror. “I did?”
“Pull over and we’ll sit a spell.”
He parked at the curb and switched off his engine. A vision of Oliver dressed in a flowing black cassock that turned into a swan drifted through his mind, though he wasn’t sure why. “I felt woefully underdressed tonight,” he said. “Not to mention my clapped-out junkmobile of a car. If I’d known, I could’ve arranged for a nicer vehicle—”
She drilled him with a sharp look. “What did you learn tonight?”
“To be more curious about people.”
“I’m asking a serious question.”
“I am being serious. All that time we’ve spent sitting around those sets, I never asked about your background. I feel like a very self-centered nitwit right now.”
Regina stubbed out the nub of her marijuana cigarette. “Why did you clam up when April-Mae brought up The Lone Ranger?” Regina’s line of questioning was killing off his pleasantly wafting sensation. “It hit a nerve, that much was obvious.”
The headlights of a car barreling down Hollywood Boulevard lit Regina’s face. The way she pushed her brows together and softly strummed her fingernails on the dashboard reminded him again of Alla. It encouraged him to share his history with the show, what happened with Purvis, and the fallout of being listed in Red Channels.
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